Allott was born in Cairo[1] or Fulham in 1920. This was just after her father Labib Farris who was an Egyptian medical student and her mother Ada Violet Rennie married.[2] She studied in Cairo and the Froebel Demonstration School at the same time as Iris Murdoch. She then went to Liverpool University. After her degree in general studies she taught[2] and studied for a doctorate in English literature on Henry James. She was supervised by her future husband, Kenneth Allott.[1] She became a lecturer in Liverpool University in 1948.[2]
Her husband's first marriage ended in 1950 and she married him on 1 June 1951.[2] His position as the Andrew Cecil Bradley Professor of Modern English Literature at Liverpool University was taken over by his wife after his death; by 1981 she was a professor at Birkbeck College.[2]
Allott died in Liverpool in 2010. She had published a selection of Keats' poetry and Novelists on the Novel in 1959.[3] She left her wealth to fund a lecturer at Liverpool University. She was also a collector and left her collections to the university and its own Victoria Gallery and Museum.[2]
